AND ANOTHER THING …

With stagnation and even deflation afflicting financial markets everywhere, Japanese banks have struck upon a novel way to get things moving again – paying people to borrow money. OK, the negative interest rate offered by the Bank of Japan (at current rates, payback is roughly 99.02 percent of the amount borrowed) is offered only to other banks and other large customers in billion-yen deals, but experts say it’s only a matter of time before this trend reaches the retail level. The nation that led the world in the miniaturization of electronics is now doing the same for economics.

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One of the best, and most overdue, proposals in Gov. Baldacci’s budget package is a two-month moratorium on new school construction while the state adopts a standardization of design and construction. To those who will work on this important project, we offer two pieces of advice. 1) Standardization does not necessarily mean ugly – the many charming Carnegie libraries around the state are proof. 2) Form really should follow function – so no flat roofs.

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The governor also intends to get the state out of the liquor business, another very good money-saving idea that has been around for years but never got carried out. At one time, in the immediate post-Prohibition years, all 70 places where a bottle could be bought were state stores; today, just 27 stores are state-owned, more than 200 are private-sector licensed agencies operating in groceries and supermarkets. Somehow, the old argument that only tight state control can prevent rampant drunkenness has lost its kick.

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Those who think government can at times be inflexible and irrational should be heartened by this news from California. Last year, state wildlife officials ordered that the frogs collected for the Mark Twain-inspired Calaveras County Frog Jumping Jubilee (some 2,000 most years) could not be returned to the wild because they might spread disease or alter the ecosystem – they’d have to be either kept in captivity or killed. This year, those officials have reversed themselves, citing an obscure 1957 provision to the Fish and Game Code that exempts competitive jumping frogs from wildlife regulations. See, there is a different set of rules for athletes.

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As U.S. military personnel deploy to the Persian Gulf for possible war in Iraq, sperm banks nationwide are reporting a sharp increase in deposits from troops shipping out. Certainly, real concerns about the effect powerful vaccines or exposure to biological weapons might have on fertility make this a reasonable precaution, but it’s just not how we picture a G.I. spending his last night stateside.